


Nyyrikki

by laufey



Category: A Redtail's Dream (Webcomic), Finnish Mythology, Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 12:46:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15243681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laufey/pseuds/laufey
Summary: Where did the Gods go?





	1. Nyyrikki

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yuuago](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuuago/gifts).



_Poor thing, she thought, watching the fox twitch as it tried to crawl toward her. Something horrible had happened to it, maybe an accident - who knew. Its bones were sticking through its fur, bloody and mangled. It was a miracle it was still alive, and she would be cruel if she didn't put an end to it. She took her knife, stepped firmly on its head to make sure it wouldn't bite her, and slit its neck. A short burst of blood was all that was left in the animal; some landed on her face, and she wiped it away, disgusted._

  
An old Volvo rattled along an empty road. The first drops of rain hit the windshield, and after a thoughtful, busy moment behind the wheel, the windshield wipers began to drag lazy arcs across the glass.  
  
The driver, if you asked him, was not a very unusual person. He was neither young nor old, not even middle-aged, just floating in the gray in-between of ages. He had some interests and hobbies, but none of them obsessive (except perhaps following a few tv-series), he had a job that he didn't love nor hate. He wasn't, for most time, even certain if he felt strongly about things. At best he was mildly annoyed at the world in general.  
  
Right now he wasn't even that, though he would have had a good reason to. Things had a habit of going royally belly-up for him, and the latest one had left him stranded in Finland.  
  
To give his story some kind of a starting point, he could probably begin in New York. He never found out why, but for some reason he had ended up on a flight to Helsinki instead of Vancouver. His luggage on the other hand was luckier, and sat happily in Canada while he was still somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, soundly asleep.  
  
His dreams had been restless. Someone kept telling him he was needed, that everything was going wrong, that they didn't know what to do without him. He forgot it all immediately as he woke up though, only to hear the captain welcome everyone to Helsinki.  
  
The flight company was polite and inefficient when he explained his situation. They'd try to find a place for him on a flight back to New York, but there was an unforeseen problem. There was that strange, highly contagious flu going around; it was nothing to worry about of course, but Americans, who worried about things too much anyway, really wanted to go home right now. All the flights were full to the last seat. The best option for him was to wait a day or two, and they'd get back to him when they knew more.  
  
The next morning he received an SMS sent to all customers of the flight company, informing them that Iceland had closed its borders, and that all flights that had a stop at Keflavík would be canceled, drastically reducing the amount of flights departing. He let out a long sigh, but despite everything, his mood didn't plummet. In fact he felt a little better about everything, knowing that flying home was now momentarily impossible. It was a direction, something to do. He laid back on his cheap hotel room bed and began to consider his options.  
  
Something knocked on the window. He turned his head to see a curious little squirrel looking in. How had it climbed this high, he wondered, there weren't even any tall trees nearby.


	2. Ajattara

_She was not feeling well. She hadn't met anyone in weeks, and now she'd have to somehow still manage to make a half-day walk back to civilization. Something had clouded her thoughts, heavy and dull, hopeless and numb. Why go anywhere, she wasn't in any shape to walk now. The rash had already crept around her waist, the blisters itched and she tried to avoid scratching them._   


It was a great skill, he thought, to be able to give up all hope at the drop of a hat; it gave one freedom of accepting change and going along with it, cursing bitterly all the while. The hotel staff offered him a few more nights, but now that he already suspected those few nights would stretch into weeks, he politely declined. The musty little room he had been given was the last place he wanted to spend such a long time. Countries did not just close their borders on a whim, the illness must have been a pretty serious deal for Iceland to even consider it, so they would not be opening again until the shitshow was over.  
  
He rolled out his hand luggage, the only part of his belongings that had successfully followed him to Finland, and decided to stay pessimistic. It had served him well so far, there was no need to drop it.  
  
The illness... he had read about it, but he hadn't thought it interesting. Well, now it was time to consider it very interesting, potentially lethal. On the upside it would likely only be a problem in the cities, and he didn't like cities that much to begin with.  
  
With those thoughts he packed the car with food, and threw his few belongings in the trunk. After just one night he was feeling quite done with hotels, and especially people in them, who let their children run screaming along the corridors around the clock. From now on he'd just sleep in the car. It wasn't comfortable either, but at least he could just drive away if the night's company didn't please him.  
  
He turned on the radio, but all that was on on almost every channel was in Finnish. The radio was ancient, and had a cassette deck, and, to his surprise, also an old cassette peeking out of it. He pushed it in, curious to hear what was on it. A scratchy, 80's faux-joyful voice filled the small Volvo immediately.  
  
"First lesson: greetings! Hyvää päivää. Good day. Päivää. Hello. Kaunis päivä. It's a beautiful day."  
  
Well, what had he been expecting. He ejected the cassette, crawled through radio stations to find one that only played music non-stop, and was at least somewhat happy until he drove out of the station's range.


	3. Lovetar

__

_Rainwater was pooling in her open mouth, but she couldn't even close it. She barely felt her jaw now, but something weird was happening to it - her whole body seemed to be growing and fusing at angles that it really shouldn't have. Lying on her back, the only thing she saw were dark shapes far above. Maybe they were storm clouds, maybe tree tops; her eyes were getting worse every day.  
_

South Finland was uneventful to say the least. The roads were near empty, only a few cars passed him by, and almost no one was driving in his direction. It was a Saturday, so perhaps the traffic was just slow, and true enough, for a while the traffic did pick up a bit.  
  
There was a town up ahead. Though he hadn't driven far yet, stopping for a bit felt good, he thought. Just to stretch his legs, buy a coffee maybe. He drove into the town, which was called something starting with Häm-, and that's how far you managed to read it while driving past the sign 120km/h.  
  
There was almost no one on the narrow streets, only a few people hurrying wherever they were headed to, a few face masks. He drove past some old wooden houses that were very pretty, but even the bright sunlight wasn't enough to make the place look inviting. If anything, it looked as if no one really lived here.  
  
It was only logical, he tried to reason with himself, attempting to push back the uneasy feeling that he'd seen horror movies like these before. It was a Saturday and there was that super catchy illness going around. Very unpleasant too, going by what little news he had managed to catch: high fever, itchy rash that spread all around the body, growing into painful blisters. Some sort of a chicken pox probably, only worse. Obviously, with something like that going around people would stay at home, on Saturdays there was no need to go anywhere anyway... right?  
  
An old woman sitting on a bench stared at him intensely. She had the kind of an aura about her you usually saw at two a.m. at small town gas stations or other liminal spaces, and he tried to walk as quickly as possible. Just as he passed her, she spat on the ground in front of his feet and hissed something he couldn't understand. He glanced at her, wished he hadn't done that, and walked even faster. For some reason she seemed to really dislike him.  
  
He stopped at what seemed like a cafe, shook the door for a bit, walked to the next one and found that one closed as well. Glancing at the sign on the door and then his watch he realized that cafes closed at two p.m. on Saturdays, and it was now half past.  
  
"WELL, NEVER MIND THEN", he said to no one in particular. Hopping back into the car he decided to abandon town, feeling oddly relieved to be back on the now completely empty motorway. The radio now crackled so badly that he gave up on the station he had been listening to, and after some searching managed to find a classical music channel. It was good enough, he thought, and realized he had just driven past a turn that would have taken him to a 24-7 gas station built across the road, like some kind of a miniature castle. This should have been annoying, really, it should have. He ought to be feeling very cranky at the world in general for having missed his chance of coffee again, but somehow, he wasn't.  
  
Instead he only felt peace, watching the quiet road stretch out ahead. Then the feeling turned to wonder and then, slowly, into a very uncomfortable feeling that something had gone wrong at some point, somewhere, and that now there was no turning back for him. That he would never see this town nor this gas station again, in fact he would never want to see them again; he wanted to get away as fast as he could, away from that weird, old woman, and whatever it was that was filling him with this uneasiness.  
  
Suddenly the voiceless music was feeding his mood, which was now bordering on anxiety. Not wanting to hear the radio crackle either, he slammed the cassette into the player again, and let out a long, shaky breath as the bouncy Finnish lesson filled the small car. "Hyvää päivää - päivää - kaunis päivä", he answered the voice, and felt a little bit better.  
  
Turning to the left on impulse, he was now heading straight into a part of the country called Lake-Finland. Not that he knew of this, of course, but later he often returned to this moment and wondered what had made him make that choice. Something, some kind of a sound maybe? The kind that you hear in the back of your head right before you walk off a cliff, that kind of a sound. The explanation didn't probably make sense to anyone but him, but there was no better way of putting one's finger on it. He had turned left there and then, and that had made all the difference.


	4. Ajattara 2

_Who was she? Where was this?_   
  
_Too much light. She retreated to the nearest large rocks, and crawled into a space between them, coiling herself up like a rope._   
  
_Better._   
  
_Hungry, though._

  
On this route there were no cars anywhere, except a few that had been left on the side of the road after some careless driving. He stopped at another place that looked like a cafe, but that, too, was closed, and there was a long-ish note on the door.   
  
It was in Finnish, and he quickly pushed it out of his mind. Yeah, Finland was a tiny country, few people, there just weren't people driving anywhere on Saturdays, so it made sense to close the cafes for weekends. There would be gas stations up ahead, certainly. It was Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, and he realized he was now repeating the thought like some kind of a mantra; Saturday, Saturday. He drove on, but after another hour on the road the mantra stopped working. Another hour later repeating after the cassette also lost its magic, and by that time he simply decided to take the first turn to the right, anything to get away from the eerie lack of people.  
  
"Hyvää päi-", the cassette said once again, before making a sound that meant the tape was unwinding into the deck. He let out a curse, tried to slam-eject the cassette, but instead the cassette hiccuped once, and a new voice took over.  
  
"Old Gods never went away, they just forgot who they were, and scattered arou-"  
  
Then the cassette finally died.

  
_So hungry. But the light hurt her, she'd just have to wait for the night._

  
The rent of the car hadn't been much to begin with, so what had he expected, he thought. He sat on the hood of the car that was now refusing to start, and considered his options. He could sit here and wait until someone would chance to drive this way... except that for the past hour he had seen exactly no one, and even if someone did appear, they might not dare to pick up a hitchhiker in the middle of the woods. The only other one he could think of was walking.   
  
Now to find out where to, he thought to himself. Along the road, perhaps? There had been no houses for a long time in the direction he had come from, and the asphalt had given way to a narrow dirt road. He sighed, stood up and climbed the tallest tree he could find.  
  
Good thing Finland was so flat, he thought, hanging onto a spruce branch with sap-stained hands, glancing around himself. The day was bright and cold, and the vision was clear in all directions. From where he had come from there was nothing but forests, and behind them, far away, fields. Ahead of him, more forest, behind of which even more forest. To the side, however, a little way away, was a lake.  
  
This would not have meant much for anyone who didn't know of one particular Finnish oddity: their deep hatred for the company of other people. To relax, Finns escaped into tiny little summer houses in the forests, and a surefire way of finding some such buildings was to find a lake. Finns would build there, as far away from each other as possible.   
  
Summer houses were not as good an option as a regular house, since they tended to lack things like insulation, electricity, and running water, but he wasn't going to be picky about it right now. Somehow, without realizing it, he was doing a very Finnish thing himself, burrowing into the woods, looking for safety in isolation. This was what Finns themselves were now doing, hiding in their cottages or, lacking that option, barring themselves inside their houses.   
  
By now news was leaking out on exactly how serious the illness actually was. The original patients were dying, the people who had come into contact with them were infected, outbreaks of the illness were being reported everywhere. Alas, the main problem was that when the outbreaks happened in Finnish cities, all the people escaped to the countryside, bringing the rash along with them.   
  
Things were, in short, moments away from a full-blown catastrophe.  
  
He knew nothing of this, which was a blessing of a kind, since there was nothing he could have done about it anyway. For him the day was beautiful, if a bit cold, birches were beginning to turn yellow, and there was an early autumn dampness in the air.   
  
He slid back down, gathered everything he could reasonably carry, and began to walk. His hands were sticky and smelled of spruce sap, and the cold air was beginning to bite his ears now that sun was setting and darkness was creeping on him. Somewhere, still far away, the chase had begun and he was running out of time.


	5. Mielikki

_Nights were okay, she thought, but the cold was a bit unpleasant. It's hard to say how she knew it, but something in her bones urged her to find a shelter before the cold season arrived. Nothing really remained of her previous self, or of her memories, but small hints were giving her a direction to go to._   
  
_There once was a cottage that was hers._   
  
_There was a small forest path that would eventually lead her there._   
  
_Moving was difficult, but she would get there._

  
The woman stepped out from the forest so suddenly that he almost walked into her. She looked like a typical village loony, clothes that had seen better days, aura of filth about her, not at all someone he'd like to deal with but - hey - finally, a human! Normalcy was returning, and he welcomed it, even if it was a bit smelly.   
  
She was staring at him quietly while he tried to rack his brain for something to say. Finns spoke English, but this woman looked to be about 80 maybe, would she even understand him?   
  
"Päivää", she said, and something about her voice threw his thoughts all in disarray. It did not match someone of 80 years, not even 60. Maybe she was an actual bum, one of those people who looked decades older than their real age... He stopped himself, realizing that she was looking at him expectantly. Wait, this was something he could reply to! How did it go again?  
  
"Kaunis", he replied, and immediately cringed on the inside. No. Wrong. "Päivää", he corrected himself. The woman gave him a quizzical look that quickly stretched to amusement, and replied to him something that sounded like it ended in a question mark. He shrugged and smiled back at her, trying to make it obvious he didn't understand her. "Kaunis päivä", he repeated at the trees and the forest floor, "I'm afraid that's all the Finnish I know. Uh. English?"  
  
The woman laughed at him, and her voice seemed to change something about the air around them. She spoke to him again, nodded at him, waited for him to nod back at her, and then disappeared as suddenly as she had arrived. It was as if she had blended into the woods. He shrugged once more, and kept on walking.  
  
The trees grew thick on both sides, reaching their branches across in anticipation of finally taking over the cleared part in the middle. The road was now nothing but tire tracks worn into the ground, between which tufts of grass stood tall.   
  
All of a sudden the tracks came to an end, and a small, red cottage peeked out from between the trees. It seemed no one was home. No smoke was coming out of the chimney, there were no cars, and the windows looked at him empty and dark. It didn't feel entirely abandoned though, the grass had been recently mowed, and everything seemed tidy. To his left he saw two other red buildings, one big and one small that looked like a privy. Right ahead was the lake, and by it sat a little sauna.   
  
He circled around the house and tried the door. Locked, well, no surprises there. No door of any other building had been left conveniently open either, even the windows were shut tightly. He tried looking under things just in case he'd find a hidden key. "Seriously," he said to a squirrel hopping on the ground nearby, "I just want to rest a bit. Make food. Sleep." He sat on the porch of the main house. "Oh well... not gonna break any windows for that. Guess it'll be the car for me, then."  
  
"The key's in a bucket by the wall", a small voice spoke, making him jump. He glanced around him, but he was still alone. Guess the stress had finally made him snap, he thought, fishing the key out of its hiding place. Guess it was better to not think too deeply about it. "Thanks," he said to the squirrel, just in case.  
  
A moment later he was standing inside the cottage, now cold, but the kind of cold that spoke of recent warmth. The air was not damp. He sat down and removed his shoes, walked to the strange, little box-shaped stove, put a few small pieces of wood inside and lit a fire. The oven plates were drawn, he noticed, so whoever owned this cottage was probably planning to return soon.  
  
Smoke flowing out and the crackle of fire made the world seem a little bit better again. He watched the first pieces of wood burn, then added some more when he was certain the flue was warmed up and wouldn't crack for being heated up too quickly.   
He'd have to call someone to tow the car, but that was going to be tomorrow's problem.

  
_Even though the nights were getting longer, they were still short. She felt the unpleasant, feverish touch of dawn starting to climb over the forest, and knew there was no place to hide. She had to hurry, the blue moment was almost here._   
  
_So hungry._


	6. Saunanhaltija

"Up! Up! Up!"  
  
The same small voice was screaming at him, though the sound was somewhat muffled by the window pane. He looked up with bleary eyes and saw a squirrel - the same one, he thought, wondering how he could so easily identify it - jumping up and down in panic behind the window.  
  
Panic?  
  
Now he was suddenly wide awake. Stepping quietly out of bed he tiptoed to the door, slipped his shoes on, and took his coat from the nail on the wall. Something, some kind of an instinct, was telling him to be very, very quiet. He tried to open the door as silently as possible, and the little clack the lock made sounded like a gunshot.  
  
Not only to him, he realized. Someone... or something was listening to him now, fully alert. He looked around slowly, but saw nothing; the forest was pitch black and dawn was still an hour away. The hair at the back of his neck was rising.  
  
There was a noise from the other side of the house, like a small branch falling down. After a while the sound came again, and this time he hopped to the soft grass in front of the house and quietly ran to the sauna building. The door to it now stood slightly ajar and opened almost without a sound. He slipped inside and closed it after him, wondering how he'd managed to think it had been locked the day before.  
  
The cold sauna was not the most comfortable place to hide. There was only one way out, only one window which showed the lake but not the cottage. As he crouched on the floor he thought he could hear something slither across the grass outside, up the stairs to the cottage, and then to his dismay, turn around and make a beeline for the sauna.  
  
A pair of pale, slender arms appeared out of nowhere, wrapped around him and slowly pulled him under the benches. The touch seemed friendly and gentle, and at the same time scared him almost as badly as whatever outside was now scratching its way up the sauna stairs. He squeezed his eyes shut and covered his head, frozen to the spot.  
  
There was some kind of commotion outside, the scratching noises seemed to burrow into his brain. Then there was a sound like something large flying through a tree or two, and landing heavily on the grass. He looked up just in time to see a young, er, woman, for want of a better word although she was a little too hairy for one, grab him by the front of his shirt. In a second he was thrown out of the sauna, picked up again, and thrown into a rowing boat. She took the rope, that tethered the boat to a tree, tore it in two with her bare hands, and pushed the boat off the shore.  
  
That... that really did it. He must still be sleeping, and this was some horrific nightmare. He watched helplessly as the cottage shrunk smaller and smaller, some invisible force now dragging the boat out onto the lake.  
  
In his whole life lakes had not felt like anything bad, but right now he felt entirely out of his element. Like he had set foot on enemy soil, wearing a huge target, and should return to the dry land as soon as possible.  
Glancing around, he noticed that the lady had forgotten to give him a pair of oars.

  
_That... had been food..._  
  
_Sauna building was forbidden, she couldn't enter it now..._  
  
_The sun was not up yet and she could still hear the boat float away..._


	7. Vellamo

He sat back, rubbing his arms. She hadn't included his coat either, and the early morning hours were bitterly cold. Mist was rolling on the lake, and if he looked at it for too long he thought he could see shapes move through it. That was just an illusion of course, caused by reeds, probably.

Not sure how, though, considering the lake was mirror smooth.  
  
"Aren't you far from home?"  
  
"GAH - I - I wish people would stop sneaking behind me! What!?"  
  
He took a moment to gather himself. There, in the middle of the open lake, was a middle-aged woman, seemingly naked from what he could see, floting by the side of his boat. Her hair was long and dark, and spread around her in wild curls. She looked somewhat unfriendly, annoyed even, and he quickly dropped his voice.  
  
"I'm - sorry, I just jumped a little. Can I help you?"  
  
"I certainly saw that. I won't tolerate that sort of thing around here."  
  
"Huh? What?"  
  
"You got scared. Highly rude of you. And you're here, right at my doors, where your kind has absolutely no business being at. Go back to your trees, the lake is ours, not yours."  
  
"I'd love to, I promise you I'd really love to. I didn't come here because I wanted to, I was -" and now he faltered a little, wondering what the hell was going on and what he thought he was even doing, "- thrown into this boat and sent floating. I don't even have oars. And," he added, remembering something, "there's something there on the shore that's hunting me."  
  
"Hunting you? What could even be hunting _you_ , isn't that kind of contradictory?"  
  
"I have no idea what you're talking about now, but there's definitely something doing that over there."  
As he pointed towards the shore, he heard something slither into the water, and realized to his greatest dismay that whatever the thing was it apparently could swim.  
  
"Ssssooooo that's the thing. Could you maybe help me somehow?"  
  
The woman seemed to study whatever was now moving through the water. After a while she sighed.  
  
"I don't really want to. That thing has its home in the forest, so it's yours to deal with, but," she said in a worried tone, "I can see that something's gone horribly wrong in the world. Well!" she concluded, "I'll send you back to where you belong. Thank you for alerting me to... that. I'll awaken the powers; it'll not do to have those things swimming in my home, not when there's humans around."  
  
"Thank yo-"  
  
"I'll send that thing with you. It really is your people's problem, not mine."


	8. Joukahainen

It would be a little bit difficult to explain how this happened, he thought, while still airborne. This was not flying, nor being thrown by force; the closest feeling was falling sideways into some endless void with stomach-turning velocity. A blurry shape somewhere behind him was probably the creature, which now had his name written on it, apparently. He really could have done without that.  
  
After a while the fall took a downward angle. He wondered briefly if the impact wouldn't just kill him, but the water woman's aim was impeccable. Instead of the rocky ground thick with trees, he hit the only pool of water anywhere nearby, and skipped across it like a stone before finally sinking into it a few metres off the shore.   
  
The forest stood quiet in the early morning light, brilliant and cold, but the kind of light that still promised a warm day up ahead. The silence was only broken by splashing and an occasional curse, while a very unhappy man was wading to the shore. Somewhere to his side there was a whistling noise that suddenly grew louder and ended with a THUMP, which made the man fall absolutely silent.  
  
Then he broke into a run. Silently, of course.  
  
Logically thinking, the creature - whatever it was - should have died as it fell, but logic was not in high demand these days. He couldn't tell how he knew it, but with absolute certainty he knew it was very much alive. He ran until he couldn't run any longer, and then paused to listen.  
  
The forest was soundless like forests were, but something about the silence was making his skin crawl. It was not a natural forest silence, it was more like the forest was holding its breath waiting for something to happen. He turned to stare at the direction he had come from - or thought he had come from - squinting to see something, anything.  
  
He didn't exactly see it. He only saw a shadow slowly and deliberately retreat behind a tree, far, far too close to him.  
  
He turned and ran again, this time towards a rocky cliff that suddenly rose to his side. It wasn't a tall cliff, more like a steep hill, but it had something that the forest did not have: an easy view of whatever was following him. His lungs hurt and his breath stuck to his throat, but he was almost there. Leaping on the first rocks, his shoes sent down a little shower of pebbles, and he realized a little too late that the cliffs were also void of soft moss that could hide the sound of his footsteps.  
  
No use crying about it, he thought, climbing as fast as he could to make some distance between himself and the monster. He would have wanted to scream, but sheer stubbornness made him keep all sounds behind his teeth. If the universe wanted him dead in a horrible way, then sure, he would die, but fuck it all, he wasn't going to make it _entertaining_.  
  
He ran into the man before he saw him, although frankly it was easy to not see him against the cliffs. Clad in various tones of gray, he seemed to grow right out of his surroundings, and it struck him that he indeed looked to be at home here. It was like he were a master of a house that was not there, but a master none the less, and by the looks on him he did not enjoy surprise visitors very much.  
  
"I'm, sorry," he panted, "run. Run, just run."  
  
"I think not," the man replied. "I'm not feeling like running at all today. Especially not," and he nodded at something below, "from a snake, no matter how large. It belongs here."  
  
Well, what had he expected. He was just about to bid a hasty goodbye, when the man suddenly grabbed the front of his shirt so tightly it bit into the backs of his arms.  
  
"You, however, do NOT belong here."  
  
He walked to the edge and extended his arm out easily, as if he didn't weigh anything. There was no point trying to struggle against the cliff man, but he still didn't want to be dropped to the no doubt open maw below, so he decided to try something. Anything.  
  
"I was going to leave! It's not like I had any choice! Just because a fucking monster chased me here doesn't mean you can just kill me -"  
  
"I'm aware. You'll just return. And you'll be just as insufferable as ever."  
  
"I - uh? I'm - look, I don't even know you." As a last measure, he grabbed the cliff man's arm with both hands, and then, on impulse, slung his feet around it. It wasn't unlike hanging off a branch, he thought, and though he didn't think he was an athlete of any sort, all his moves were now easy and light. "And I DON'T want to be eaten alive. Fuck you."  
  
The cliff man sputtered a few curses and tried to shake him off, but his grip was tight. Somewhere below a sound of claws against rock was drawing nearer, not as quickly as he had feared, but still.   
  
"I fucking swear, I'll feed you  _and_ my own fucking arm to that snake if you don't let go -"  
  
"Language, Joukahainen", said someone behind him. Glancing, he saw a familiar looking old woman sit on one of the rocks. She could have been the same bag lady he had come across to on the previous day, except she no longer looked like a village loony. She... no longer looked human at all, with strange, watery eyes, hair that seemed grassy and rough, and teeth that - well, there were just so many of them.  
  
"Hi. Nice to see you again", he said as casually as he could muster. "Would you maybe kick this asshole in the nuts for me?"  
  
"LANGUAGE. Joukahainen, that one's mine, so I'm laying claim. Give him back." She thought for a moment. "The snake you can keep, it's by all rights yours."  
  
Something that had been nagging at the back of his mind was now demanding attention, and the reappearance of the bag lady made it surface with whiplash force.   
  
How was she suddenly speaking a language he understood?  
  
How was he communicating with everyone, even though he knew exactly three words of Finnish?  
  
Cliff man interrupted his thoughts.  
  
"Oh, NO problem. He's all yours. Catch."  
  
With that he swung his arm around a few times, although by all laws of physics this shouldn't have been possible, and flung him vertically up in the air. For a while everything zoomed past him at lightning speed, slowed to a halt, and for a nauseating second he hung midair, going nowhere at all. Then all that was left was falling back down.


	9. Nyyrikki

He blinked a few times. Lying on the forest floor had wet his shirt through in the back, and twigs and pine cones were uncomfortable underneath him. The sun was now finally up, and the light hurt his eyes.  
  
Why was he here again? Oh, yes.  
  
He had something to do, didn't he?  
  
He had been called back, there had been a pressing reason...  
  
Suddenly the memories came back in a flash, and he opened his eyes completely. How long had he been unconscious? Long enough for the dawn to fully arrive, at least. Turning sideways, he scanned the cover of the trees around him, but this time things were different. First of all, it was like he could see miles in all directions, all forest creatures living their lives, some already feeling the effect of the illness. Not just in this country either, he saw everything that his people could see, and they covered a large terrain.  
  
The snake was right next to him now, only kept away by the open spot of sunlight. He realized that the safe area was probably his own making. Falling through the trees he had taken quite a few branches along, clearing himself an uncovered space on the forest floor.  
  
Another thing that had changed was that there was no need to worry.  
  
The snake most definitely did belong in the forest; he could not deny it existence just because it wanted to eat him. It was, like the woman of the lake had said, entirely his own problem to solve.   
  
Knowing the illness was spreading at uncomfortable speed, he paused to consider the options. Yes, he could kill the snake, though he did not have the right of gods by his side. He could also let it be, but - and here he felt the main issue lay - that would be dangerous to humans, and humans were his allies. He gave them the right to hunt his people, or denied it, and in return the humans paid in silver and lived in the forest respecting its laws.  
  
Besides, this snake had once been a human, hadn't it?  
  
He let out a long breath and snapped his fingers. The snake vanished, or one could say it was sent away. It was a little bit anticlimatic a way of dealing with it, but this really was the only thing he could think of doing. Send it away, to a place similar to this, to some forest elsewhere in some other country. Make it somebody else's problem instead.   
  
All around him in the trees the squirrels, hundreds of them, broke into happy chatter when they saw the danger was gone. His people, he had been gone for a long time, but it seemed they remembered him still. Now he had a new responsibility: to look after them, to awaken what other forest powers there were, and to assemble a force that would keep an eye on things and report to him whatever the illness would still bring along with it. The snake was probably just a beginning, he knew with sinking certainty, there was nothing he could do to stop the inevitable, so it was best to start preparing to battle it with whatever he could instead.  
  
He sat up properly, scratching the back of his head that was sticky with blood, and pushed here and there to force his skull back into its proper shape. It was already beginning to heal, and he had work to do.


	10. Gods

Some notes on the various creatures of the story. I thought to add these as end notes, but couldn't decide where to add them, so why not just slap them into a chapter of their own ha ha that's what I'll do! I mean hi.

 

\- Nyyrikki is the son of the forest gods, twin brother to Tyytikki. They're minor gods, Tyytikki is the origin of squirrels and Nyyrikki is the owner of squirrels, so their jobs overlap a lot. Squirrel pelts used to be used as currency, which I guess is why the animal is important enough to have its own gods.

\- Ajattara is a snake-like forest monster, often said to resemble a woman. Like its name suggests, it chases its prey. It's even said to enjoy the chasing so much, that it prolongs it, scaring its prey into run until it can't run anymore, and only then eating it. Bad news is that if you get an ajattara on your tracks, you're done for; it can't really be fought.

\- Lovetar is the origin of illnesses. She does _not_ like people she cannot, for some reason, make ill.

\- Mielikki is the queen of forest, wife to Tapio. She sometimes likes to dress up as an old woman just to get closer to humans. No worries though, she's very human-friendly, and likes nothing as much as humans praising the beauty of her forest, or herself. She's also Nyyrikki and Tyytikki's mother.  
  
\- Saunanhaltija is a sauna spirit. Their appearance ranges from beautiful to monstrous, and they're the most powerful household spirit, capable of extreme violence if necessary.

\- Vellamo is the queen of lakes. She's also very human-friendly, but she hates noise, anger, cursing, and, for some reason, people getting a shock or being scared while on the lake. She, like all water powers, dislikes forest powers (the feeling is mutual).

\- Joukahainen... well, he's more known for being a character in Kalevala, but he's somewhat associated with cliffs, mountains and deep forests. He's one of the world creation trio, the other two representing air and water.


End file.
